Its legs are too long. It's a Model Cave Harvestman, or very rare daddy long legs, which is unique to the Great Basin National Park, where discoveries of new life-forms could stand in the way of a controversial groundwater pumping plan by Las Vegas. Photo: John Locher / Las Vegas Review-Journal. Click on the Harvestman to be taken to more photos by Locher and to read about an underground tour of Nevada's only national park by environment reporter Henry Brean in Sunday's Review-Journal. Thanks to John Fleck of the Albuquerque Journal and jfleck at inkstain for catching this deliciously creepy and wondrous story out of Las Vegas.

THE dams and aqueducts that make modern life possible in Southern California — Hoover Dam (1931-36), the Colorado River Aqueduct (1933-1941) and the State Water Project (1957– __) — all owe their existence to the Los Angeles Aqueduct (1905-1913.) This gravity-fed canal extending from high in the Eastern Sierra 223 miles southwest to Los Angeles proved that 20th century Californians needn’t go to water, water could be brought to them. Cities could be built in the sand. Call it a water grab, call it ingenuity, the story of the Los Angeles Aqueduct foretold the story of the modern West.

In a boon for teachers, conservationists and anyone with a passably curious mind, Chris Austin, editor of the Water Education Foundation’s newsfeed Aquafornia, has produced a sweeping photo essay on the Aqueduct. Moreover, she has allowed us to imbed it here. Congratulations to Chris and many thanks to her and the Water …